A minimum price for booze? That’s just middle class puritanism

If the scaremongers are to be believed, Britain is sinking into a bog of alcoholism of the sort depicted by William Hogarth in the 18th century.

Not only is it apparently unsafe to walk the streets on a Saturday night without being accosted by the human debris of our binge-drinking culture, but the medical treatment of those facing the long-term consequences of hitting the sauce is said to be slowly bankrupting the NHS.

The latest plan, perhaps inspired by the approach taken to illegal drugs over the past 40 years, is to “get tough” and “crackdown” on so-called problem boozers. With this in mind, the government isconsidering hitting drinkers in the wallet with a minimum price for a unit of alcohol.

Scotland has already introduced a 50p minimum price and, this week, the Coalition announced a 10-week consultation on the issue after a Government-backed report recommended a price of 45p for a unit of alcohol.

Hyperbole aside, however, minimum pricing may not be the magic pill it’s cracked up to be. The evidence to suggest that the solution to Britain’s apparent drink problem is to price people off alcohol is flimsy at best.

While no doubt appealing to those who write the familiar headlines depicting an out-of-control horde of drinkers laying waste to British high streets every Saturday night, the statistics appear to show that the country’s drink problem (if it exists at all) lies beyond the reach of mere price controls.

According to the Office for National Statistics, average weekly consumption of alcohol in 2010 was highest among those who worked in middle class professions and lowest among those in routine and manual occupations. Despite the lurid tabloid depictions of the dreaded “out of control” women, the statistics also showed that professional women drank on average 9.2 units of alcohol a week compared with those in manual occupations who drank 6.2 units a week.

When it comes to age, adults aged over 45 were three times more likely to drink alcohol every day than younger people.

You may want to go back and read the last two paragraphs again. The people that are supposed to be getting loaded on cheap Alcopops every weekend; those the tabloids and the Government want to price off the booze – you know, the working classes – aren’t, as it happens, drinking anywhere near as much as their middle class counterparts.

There’s a certain irony in the fact that, in the years to come, it may be working class folk who are footing the drink-induced health bills of, not the Vicky Pollards of this world, but those with a class background that’s closer to that of her creators – the middle classes.

In actual fact, not only are media portrayals of a descent into nationwide alcoholism an excuse to sneer at pictures of half cut women and the lower orders who apparently no longer know their place, but they’re also grossly misleading, for alcohol consumption among Britons has been decreasing – and decreasing quite significantly – for a number of years.

Between 2005 and 2010, the average weekly alcohol consumption per adult decreased by almost a third, from 14.3 units to 11.5 units. Among men, average alcohol consumption decreased from 19.9 units to 15.9 units a week and for women the figure reduced from 9.4 units to 7.6 units.

The data was released earlier this year and to the credit of certain sections of the press the socio-economic differentials were picked up on. However, the data that showed a widespread decrease in alcohol consumption, if not exactly hushed up, didn’t attract anywhere near the number of headlines the lurid descriptions of binge drinkers tend to. And there were certainly no accompanying photos of a country shunning the bottle and soberly going about its business.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Britain does have a drink problem. The next step is to identify those most in need of help in controlling their alcohol intake. As the statistics show, these tend to be middle-aged people from the middle classes – hardly the people who are going to be discouraged by a few extra pounds on a bottle of wine.

Am I the only one who suspects, however, that minimum pricing is not primarily about health, but rather about “cracking down” on that which Middle England is forever fretting about cracking down on: the working classes having too much of a good time?

2 Comments

Well, no. All the average drinking statistics mentioned are within the recommended guidelines (2-3 units a night for women, 3-4 for men) and since the variability is likely to be different within each group, average figures tell us nothing about the people who drink to excess and how many fall into each socio-economic bracket. Similarly, people drinking every night may be having a single glass of wine which is ok health-wise (although not strictly recommended) and not drinking to excess at all.

If you read the report honestly, and don’t just cherry-pick the bits that support your argument, you find things like this: “Very heavy drinking (exceeding 12/9 units) was most prevalent in the 16 to 24 and 25 to 44 age groups. In the 16 to 24 age group, 16 per cent of men and 12 per cent of women drank more than 12/9 units, and 15 per cent of men and 11 per cent of women did so in the 25 to 44 group” and “In the 16 to 24 age group 43 per cent of those who consumed alcohol in the last week consumed more than 8/6 units on their heaviest drinking day.” (page 28). When you account for the fact that a quarter of the 16-24 age group are below 18, the argument that problem drinkers tend to be older can’t be supported. The author does seem to be correct that problem drinking is higher in middle-class households, but hasn’t quoted the bits of the report that actually say that! Either he doesn’t understand the report, or he’s not read it properly.

Subscribe!

On Facebook

By Gianluca Ferrara Almost nobody talks of the war in Yemen. It is a conflict that reveals how disgusting and dangerous our trading partners are in the Middle East. Amid international indifference, Yemen and its 28 million inhabitants are suffering from the consequences of Saudi Arabia’s criminal policies since March 2015. The Yemeni Houthi rebels, […]

Up to 4,000 workers at Amazon’s despatch centre at Piacenza in northern Italy will be striking for better pay and conditions on Black Friday. In addition, the workers organised by the unions Tertiary Ugl, Fisascat-Cisl, Filcams-Cgil, and Uiltucs-Uil decided on an overtime ban until 31 December, hitting Christmas shopping. Amazon’s strong growth justifies a more […]

“Jamaica” coalition talks collapsed on Sunday night after Christian Lindner (Fdp) said no to governing with the CDU and Greens, and Angela Merkel was forced to acknowledge that the margins for negotiation were depleted. For Lindner the biggest obstacle lay in defining the political line on European issues. Federico Ferraù caught up with Italian economist […]

Vittorio Agnoletto does not regret his native Milan lost out to Amsterdam in the bid to replace London as home of the European Medicines Agency. His concerns lie elsewhere The European Medicines Agency will move to Amsterdam, it has been decided by a draw. This has left a bitter taste in the mouth of Italians […]

About Left Futures

Meta

Left Futures

Left Futures is a new Labour Left network. If you want to get involved as a contributor, please contact James Elliott using the form on this page.
Header images: Wind farm [credit]. Balloons [credit] and crowd scene [credit].